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Liberal arts colleges and other primarily undergraduate institutions are increasingly using campus venture competitions to stimulate student creativity and engagement with entrepreneurial ideas. Quite often, such competitions are spearheaded by a business, engineering, or entrepreneurship faculty group, but are intended to engage the entire campus. One challenge in the liberal learning environment is to encourage widespread participation from students in diverse majors outside of the traditional business disciplines in campus venture competitions. A second challenge is enlisting the support and involvement of faculty from non-business disciplines in this type of extracurricular activity. There are undoubtedly other challenges around administration, funding, and commercialization. This session presents and invites discussion about the aims and accomplishments of smaller college venture competitions, and lessons learned that might be applied more widely.

Dr. Trexler Proffitt is the new William and Virginia Miers Chair of Entrepreneurial Studies and Business at Muhlenberg College. He has a PhD in organization behavior from Kellogg and teaches management, strategy, and entrepreneurship topics. He is interested in engaging liberal arts college students in entrepreneurial thinking, social entrepreneurship, and engaging in their local economy. In the near term, he seeks to broaden the appeal of the... Read More →